Handel: Girlfriend found hanged

Saturday

May 26, 2012 at 2:00 AM

GOSHEN — Murder defendant Timothy Handel testified on Friday that a distraught Katie Connolly showed up at the New Windsor house where he was staying on July 19, pointed a sawed-off shotgun at him and demanded that he hand over the kids.

Heather Yakin

GOSHEN — Murder defendant Timothy Handel testified on Friday that a distraught Katie Connolly showed up at the New Windsor house where he was staying on July 19, pointed a sawed-off shotgun at him and demanded that he hand over the kids.

Handel said he grabbed the gun, threatened to call police and then left the house with the girls. When he returned more than two hours later, he found her hanged in the garage.

Handel, 40, is on trial before Judge Jeffrey Berry on murder and manslaughter charges in Connolly's disappearance and death. Her body was found Aug. 3, dismembered and buried behind the home on Riley Road in New Windsor where Handel had moved on July 11 with the couple's 2- and 3-year-old daughters. Connolly's co-workers last saw her on July 7.

As his lawyer, Paul Trachte, questioned him, Handel painted a picture of Connolly at odds with the happy, loving mom and the capable, friendly manager other witnesses have described. Handel said she'd been frustrated and down about the new job at QVC and that he feared she was suicidal. Handel said that when he and the girls got back to Pennsylvania from his uncle's funeral in New Windsor on July 10, Connolly had left a note saying goodbye. He packed his and the girls' things and headed back to New Windsor with them.

Handel said Connolly showed up on Riley Road early on July 19, alcohol on her breath, and demanded that he give her the girls or she'd take them "the hard way." He said she pulled the gun from a suitcase and tried to fire as they argued, but the gun just clicked. He said he got the gun away from her, but it hit him in the eye.

He said he put the girls in his pickup and drove to get help with the cut. He didn't tell anyone how he got the injury. When he got home, he said, Connolly was dead, hanging over an 8-foot ladder in the garage. He said he cut her down, but remembers nothing else for two days.

On cross-examination by Chief Trial Assistant District Attorney John Geidel, Handel said he could not remember cutting up Connolly's body with a reciprocating saw, renting an excavator or burying her body — or much of anything from July 19 to 21.

"I was drinking a lot," Handel said. When questioned about how much, Handel said, "Not heavily heavily — just Bud Lights and a couple of shot of liquor to sleep."

Geidel asked about other witnesses' accounts, which were consistent with one another but contradictory to Handel's. Handel said all of the others were inaccurate.